Retrospective: Limbo

I don’t really remember the circumstances surrounding the release of Limbo. I want to say that it was there leading the charge of the indie game movement, but maybe not? Seems like it came around a couple years too late for that. In any case, it must have been a fairly big Xbox Live Arcade release, as I was super jazzed for it, and I’ve never followed XBLA games too closely.

At the time, I was in full-fledged Achievement Whore mode. Limbo, I think, was one of the first games to truly break me. I think that I may have collected three or four achievements on my first playthrough, and just couldn’t go back for more. Even with an achievement guide, I would have only been equipped to earn all the “collectible” achievements. The one challenge that seemed insurmountable was the achievement to clear the game in a single sitting with fewer than five deaths.

Even today, I can’t imagine playing Limbo enough to get that sucker. The game is evil. It goes out of its way to trick you and is filled with “gotcha” moments. It wants you to die. To show your little boy character being mutilated in unspeakable ways. That’s how you’re supposed to learn and progress in this game. You’re not supposed to get by on observation or skill. You’re supposed to be killed and then not do the thing that killed you. Even if you do play through the game several times and remember how to survive every trap, there are a number of challenges that require perfect timing. And quite frankly, under the pressure of needing not to die, I know that I would drop the ball immediately.

Continue reading Retrospective: Limbo

Somber

Sometimes it really bums me out to look back on the Articles page.

It reminds me of a time when I got excited about pretty much everything.

Now I find it incredibly difficult to genuinely give a damn about anything.

Where has my joie de vivre gone?

Also sometimes it shocks me to read the monstrous things I wrote as a youth.

Skyward Sword Replay: Finale!

It’s been a long, winding journey, but I have finally completed The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (for the second time). But that’s putting the horse before the cart there. We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover!

Be warned: there are so many words here. Like, maybe pack a lunch before you dive in.

When last I left off, I had just revived the Thunder Dragon and gained a quarter of whatever magical song unlocks the last dungeon. It was a simple task that required me to traverse a new area while using tools I’d acquired to solve puzzles. This also unlocked the boss rush and let me replay the Silent Realm challenges. It didn’t feel like padding at all!

The next two dragons… didn’t fare so well.

The chase for the Fire Dragon made me climb up Eldin Volcano for a third time. Only this time around, it was a stealth mission and all of my equipment was taken away. This part really felt like padding. It would have been 100% improved if at the very least I was sneaking through a new area, like a monster base or something. But it was just the same old Eldin Volcano, this time with some new barricades and guard towers.

Meeting the Fire Dragon was a lacklustre scene as well, he just popped out of the lava, sang his song, and disappeared without so much as introducing himself. It felt unusually stunted to me, in a game where characters are constantly over-explaining everything.

Continue reading Skyward Sword Replay: Finale!

A month with Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO hasn’t been out in Canada for a while month yet, but due to some sneaky sneakiness, I’ve had it for a month now. I was totally enamoured of it for the first few days, but how about now? When it comes to phone games, I often get very excited at first and then cool on them just as quickly. Did Pokémon GO avoid that fate?

The answer is both yes and no.

While I was very excited about AR Pokémon times at first, the massive load on the servers made the experience very touch-and-go. So I did sort of let my infatuation with it fade, as it was always a gamble whether I’d actually be able to play or not. Things seem to be getting better, as the game is locking up significantly less often now than it did even two weeks ago. Then again, I might just be getting lucky.

As is often the case with multiplayer-focused games, the actual “game” part of Pokémon GO seems like a massive waste of time for me, and not worth the trouble. There’s the subset of people who will invest all of their time in the game and dominate it, leaving those of us who play casually with no hope of even a temporary victory. And of course, since this is a phone game, folks with cash to burn can also just pay to win. I put a couple dollars in to buy a bag upgrade because I found myself constantly running out of item space, but that’s all I’m ever going to spend on it. So it seems completely futile for me to even try to play the gym battles when they’re stocked with Pokémon at levels that I can’t fathom.

However, I do find it fun to simply wander around and catch Pokémon. The thrill of the hunt is enough for me right now, but I’m sure that it’ll wear off before long. Exploration options are pretty limited when your only method of travel is by foot and you’re also quite lazy. I feel like before long, my Pokémon GO experience will dwindle down to walking around with the app open to hatch all those eggs. That seems to be the real best hope of catching them all.

It’s no secret that I’m a bit of a contrarian, and as weird as it is, I’m a little put off by the massive hype surrounding the game. I should be ecstatic that more people are into something Pokémon-related than ever before, but for whatever reason I find it making me want to distance myself from the phenomenon until it dies down a bit. I know it’s ridiculous, and I hate myself for being such a hipster douche.

So yeah, time will tell. I was one of the few who were incredibly excited about PoGo before it launched, which makes it odd that I’m not as over the moon about it as so many others. Maybe a couple updates with new features will truly rekindle my flame for it, but for now, it’ll just be a thing I may or may not boot up when I go for a walk. Full disclosure: It’s probably going to get booted up more often than not.

Also I still inexplicably want the stupid bracelet. What the heck is wrong with me?

Migraine Watch: August 4/16

I’m a little bit worried that it hasn’t been even three months since the last migraine attack that I experienced. I haven’t ever had two happen so close together. And of course, this is after I was so happy last time that they had spaced out farther than ever before.

Anyway, this one rolled out almost exactly the same as the previous one, only my arm and jaw got all tingly first, and then it moved into my brain and stunted my communication abilities.

To be honest, I’m much more worried about the aura effects than the actual headaches. It’s terrifying to be put in a place where you can literally no longer form coherent sentences, when you feel like your basic comprehension of language is quickly disappearing. Even worse when you’re in the middle of a work day and you can’t communicate to anyone what’s happening to you.

But it passed, and then I went home, worried for the whole ride that I was going to throw up in the bus. I didn’t. Arrived at home, took an ibuprofen, and passed out for a couple hours. When I awoke, the worst was over and only the lingering pain of the headache remained.

If nothing else, at least the actual headache part seems to be getting milder with each attack. I don’t know if that’s much comfort in the wake of the escalating aura effects. Is my brain falling apart? Should I be worried? I think it’s time to talk to a doctor.

Start : 3:00 PM (aura), 3:50 PM (migraine)

End : roughly 8:00 PM

Aura : Numbness in right hand/forearm, moving to jaw. Transition to dizziness and great difficulty thinking/spelling (I tried to spell “transition” and it came out “transviserinfverinsiverinsioncervisionversiong”). Finally, inability to focus visually.

Triggers: Lack of sleep (likely), stress (less likely), maybe something in my diet?

Medication : Ibuprofen (2 pills, taken during actual migraine)

migraine

Skyward Sword Replay: Week 8

As much as I’ve been enjoying it, I wanted to clear Skyward Sword off my plate so that I could focus my leisure time into other activities. Namely, a pair of games about tracking down ferocious and/or adorable monsters. So I hunkered down to play through what was left of the game. Once again, I failed in my quest to make it to the end, because there was a lot more game left than I had thought.

Like, after loading my save, I was standing there at the door to the Fire Sanctuary, thinking “okay, I’ve got this and then Sky Keep to go, then the final battle and we’re done.” That was not the case.

To open the Fire Sanctuary, I needed a “really big container of water” which had me thinking Water Dragon. No problem. Just warp over there, get her to do her thing, and we’re gold. Deities never give away help for free, though, so I- oh, wait, no. She did just hand over the big basin full of water, no questions asked. Well I certainly like how easy that was and how there was no pointless sidequest associated with it!

Oh, but then the little robot who was carrying the basin didn’t want to fly all the way to the top of the volcano, so I had to play a stupid escort mission all the way up Eldin Volcano. This is what, like, the fourth time I’ve had to climb this thing? Eugh.

Continue reading Skyward Sword Replay: Week 8

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – July 2016

Sometimes I think that I need to grow out of being upset that I don’t get summer vacation any more. I mean, it’s been well over a decade since I finished high school. In the time that I’ve been out of school, kids have started and finished school. But you know what? Nuts to that. I miss having two months to do whatever I damn well pleased.

~ Game Over ~

Final Fantasy VII (PC) – I’m amazed at how much shorter this game is than I remembered. I mean, I suppose it’s in part from not having sought out all the ultimate weapons and other fancy doo-dads, but even with a few hours of grinding and breeding a gold chocobo, the final time clocked in at under 40 hours. Crazy! (The time investment for prepping to fight the Emerald and Ruby Weapons is a whole other story.)

BOXBOXBOY! (3DS) – When I finished BOXBOY!, the only thing in the world that I wanted was more BOXBOY!. And now I have it! And it’s sooooooooooo good! And the ending suggests that there could be up to three more sequels. Hooray!

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – July 2016

TE Movie Review: Holidays

It’s smack-dab in the middle of summer, which is scientifically proven to be the farthest point in the year from any holidays that are worth celebrating. Canada Day seems like a distant memory now, and Thanksgiving is basically a lifetime away.

So what better time to watch a movie all about holidays?

I noticed the film simply titled Holidays on Netflix after burning through the first half of the new season of BoJack Horseman the other night, and though I tend to shy away from horror movies a little more now that I live alone (I’m a big scaredy baby), I knew in my heart that I needed to watch this one. And not even in a “put it in the queue” sense. No, I played that sucker right then and there.

holidaysban

Holidays is a horror anthology, a genre that I had never really warmed to until very recently. It is composed of eight short films, each themed around a different holiday, and each by a different writer/director. It’s a lot like The ABCs of Death, but a little more substantial, because you’re not splitting the run time between 26 bite-size shorts. The eight stories here definitely vary in quality just about as much as the vignettes in The ABCs of Death, though. I’ll go through them in order of least to most enjoyable.

Mother’s Day – I thought this was the weakest story of the bunch, but that’s not the most damning criticism, because it’s not really bad. It could definitely be more interesting if fleshed out into a full story, but it just pales in comparison to the rest of the stories featured in Holidays. What bothered me the most is the, uh, “effect” at the end, which… is hard to describe without spoiling it. But I rewound it a couple of times just to check it out, and there’s just some weird spatial issues. It wouldn’t be worth most people’s time to pick at a half-second shot like this, but it bugged me because it was it was just so slightly off. If you’re really curious, but don’t want to watch the movie, the shot in question is like the second result if you type “holidays movie” into Google image search.

St Patrick’s Day – Again, not really a bad tale, but just totally friggin’ weird. Not really that horrifying, either? There’s a disturbing bathtub scene, but that’s the worst of it. Actually, it’s a lot like the Mother’s Day short, but with a slightly different bent. It’s also longer, and the ending is completely bonkers. They’re both stories about women who end up pregnant with non-human babies. Babies is the wrong word entirely for both scenarios, but I am not smart enough to know what the most fitting word would be. Anyway, this one’s got a little more characterization in both the mother and the folks around here, whereas Mother’s Day is more about the events than the people involved in them. I typically prefer stories that are more about the characters.

Halloween – This short was written and directed by Kevin Smith. Which means that I was very excited to see it, but was unsure about where it would land on the quality scale (EDITOR’S NOTE: Ryan, you still need to watch Tusk). This is the story of three camgirls and their abusive boss. When he won’t give them the night off for Halloween and then attempts to rape one of them, the girls knock him out and then get even. Or, I don’t know, maybe a little more than even. Depends on how many times he successfully violated these women. Anyway, it’s pretty gross, and I don’t think it even makes sense? Also, there’s a really cringe-inducingly awful monologue about halfway through that really takes the cake. Like, uuuuugh, I know you can write better than this, Kevin Smith. It’s probably the actual worst short of the bunch, but those other two were just so tepid that I had to rank them lower.

Valentine’s Day – This is the opening short of the collection, and it really only ranks low on my list because it’s totally predictable from the first minute. It is the story of a young girl who has a crush on her swimming coach and is bullied by her classmates. Can you guess what happens yet? Yeah. I do like the way that the main antagonist’s shield breaks down as the story comes to its climax, how it strips away her toughness and shows her vulnerability when there’s nobody around to posture for. Said climax is slow and brutal, and the conclusion wraps it up perfectly. Quite opposite of Mother’s Day, this story definitely works best as a short, and would really lose a lot if it was stretched out any longer.

Easter – You  know when you’re a kid, and you start thinking about the holiday mascot stories that your parents tell, and start asking questions? That’s what this story is about. The first half is just a little girl pissing her mom off, asking too many questions about the Easter Bunny and Jesus and if Daddy is ever coming home. She’s unusually terrified by the thought of seeing the Easter Bunny, so of course, that’s what happens. Sort of. The second half is definitely surreal and feels a lot like the kind of thing that you’d see from Guillermo Del Toro. I enjoyed the creative twist they employed here, and the downer ending really stands out from the rest. Easter may only be halfway up the list here, but that’s only because the top four are almost all equally good. It’s all top-notch stuff from this point on.

Christmas – I’d just like to point out that the main character here is played by Seth Green. That’s already got my attention. In this short film, he plays a down-on-his-luck husband and father, who lost out on the year’s hottest toy on Christmas Eve when a shopkeeper sells the last unit to some smug douche. Said douche has a heart attack in the parking lot, and Seth Green proceeds to swipe the VR headset thingy and leave the man to die like a chump. It’s a very Twilight Zone kind of story, where the headset shows you content tailored personally for you, and of course Seth Green gets some very shocking visuals when he tries it out. Also, there are two twists! Both of them good! Great, even! The two shorts couldn’t be any more different, but I cannot for the life of me decide if I prefer Easter of Christmas. They’re both amazing, so let’s call it even.

New Year’s Eve – Scene: A schlubby apartment. A woman is bound and gagged in a chair. A clearly unwell man laments that their relationship is lacking, and has his gun jam on him twice before he successfully blasts her brains all over the wall. Cut to a young woman sitting in her apartment, bored and alone, browsing a dating website. She stumbles across the profile of the man we saw earlier, no way to know about his murderous tendencies. On New Year’s Eve, the two meet for dinner. This can not end well. But it kind of does? At its climax, the story folds in on itself and becomes darkly hilarious. The final shot is so entertaining, and makes for the perfect ending to this anthology. It is bittersweet, however, because I keep thinking about how much my ex-wife would love this short. Oh well.

Father’s Day – I said that the top four shorts were all pretty evenly matched, but that was sort of a lie. Father’s Day really goes above and beyond. It is amazing, and beautiful, and haunting, and I simply cannot stop thinking about it. Partly because it is amazing and beautiful and haunting, and partly because I don’t have the level of understanding necessary to really get what happened. Perhaps it is supposed to be ambiguous, though. All I know for sure is that it hit all the right buttons for me. It told a very affecting story with simplicity and elegance, with the kind of horror that makes you yearn to know more, though its brevity makes it all the more enchanting. I want to watch this short again and again and again. I want to read analyses of it from other enthusiasts. I want to have a service that can direct me to similar content. I loved it, and if a person could marry a short film, I’d be on my knee proposing to this one.

So there you have it. All of your questions about Holidays answered, and probably a lot of answers for questions that you didn’t have. Wait, no. I didn’t really go into the specifics of any of the segments, so you probably have a ton of unanswered questions. Welp, this is a dumb paragraph and we all know it, but that’s become somewhat of a tradition here, so I’m going to keep to it. Professionalism be damned! This is a hobbyist website, and I’ll write stupid conclusions if I damn well want to!

Skyward Sword Replay: Week 7

Between Monster Hunter Generations and the new season of BoJack Horseman, I barely touched Skyward Sword last week. Didn’t accomplish a whole lot, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

My first objective was to round up some treasures from Goddess Cubes. Which, of course, was a short nightmare because it required flying to and fro in the sky. I know I’ve said it before, but flying is super tedious. Absolutely the worst part of the game. The sky isn’t really that big, just enough to create a good sense of scale, but it feels so massive and empty when you have to fly from one end to the other. Gah.

I also discovered that I had secretly gotten a new power: the ability to dowse for certain types of collectibles. I learned this after collecting a few more gratitude crystals and visiting Batreaux for a prize (rupees). Fi popped out afterward and told me I could now dowse for gratitude crystals. Then she popped out again after I upgraded a few weapons and gave me the ability to dowse for upgrade materials. I suppose it’s a good power to have, but most of the time, random materials lying around are just amber relics, which I already have like thirteen million of.

The best one, when I went back on plot, was when Fi let me start dowsing for Goddess Cubes. Which is mostly great, because they’re the big treasures, which can be great things like power-up medals and heart pieces but are sometimes less helpful things like rupees. Maybe extra ammo satchels? I kind of hope not. I just spent a lot buying and upgrading a new quiver because 20 arrows isn’t really enough. It’d be a shame to find one for free now.

Continue reading Skyward Sword Replay: Week 7

Talking about Ninja Turtles: Volume 2

My journey through the entire series of the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon continues. Last time I made a big wall of text about it, I had just finished up the fifth season: the halfway point of the series. Let’s go over some stray observations I have about seasons six through eight.

  • The turtle colour/voice flubs are still out in full force. I would have thought that this was a problem that would have been ironed out by this point, but I think it might actually be getting worse as we move on. At least I’ve been noticing more instances of it. You never see such egregious errors in other cartoons, so I can only imagine that it’s the result of having four characters that look exactly the same.
  • Season six was basically just your normal average season. Though a run of 16 episodes is positively quaint after the massive number of episodes in seasons three and four.
  • The first half of season seven was produced for season four, but held back for whatever reason. So that means that you’re rolling back a couple years worth of animation improvements, and it’s visibly uglier than the latter half of the season.
  • Also, it goes back to using the original intro sequence, which IMO is the better of the two.
  • By this point, Michaelangelo has permanently traded in his nunchaku for a grappling hook. Which I suppose is more useful, but way less cool. And it’s all thanks to those super-lame Europeans who thought nunchucks were too violent.
  • But swords and laser blasters were okay? Get bent, Europe.
  • The first half of season seven also happens to be a hole “TMNT visit Europe” series, which makes for a nice change of pace and allows for a little cultural edutainment, but the stories go to pot. It made sense that when Krang and Shredder were constantly attacking New York, the Turtles would always be there to stop them. But then somehow they always manage to be attacking exactly the European location that the Turtles just happen to be in at the time. Why not attack New York when you know that the Turtles are away in Europe and won’t be there to stop you? Or vice versa? You guys have a teleporter that can take you anywhere. Steal something from anywhere else in the world.
  • It would make way more sense if the Turtles simply faced other villains while on their vacation.
  • The other half of season seven not only goes back to being more visually appealing, but the storylines also get a hack of a lot better than ever before. Well, some of them. The episode where they travel back in time to an ancient Japan where everyone speaks perfect English was a little silly. Overall, though, much better stories.
  • The episode “Invasion of the Krangazoids” shows us a glimpse of what Krang’s true form looks like, when he creates clones of himself that evolve into giant reptilian monsters. But it also made me consider that it doesn’t make any sense that Krang’s brain was removed from his body as a punishment for his war crimes. It’s more than I want to type out, but just think about it a bit for yourself. No wonder that’s never mentioned in any other incarnation of the TMNT.
  • Tokka and Rahzar show up in season seven. That’s cool. Except that Rahzar got a significant intelligence boost while Tokka remains kind of a stupid baby.
  • Everything goes way off the rails in season eight. The intro and theme song change. The visual quality improves considerably, but the visual style goes to poop. April gets a new costume. TMNT now wants to be X-Men. It’s crazy. Complete insanity.
  • Let’s start with the intro. The theme song has gone from awesome to some kind of gross 90’s rock abomination. It also seems really long. Or maybe it just feels that way because it’s awful. Oh and also it intercuts footage from the cartoon with footage from the live-action movies. It makes zero sense.
  • And on a separate point, all the cartoon footage is pried out of the episodes, rather than being completely unique animation like the other intros. It’s so lame. I just can’t get over how lame it is.
  • It’s kind of fun that the season is a single long storyline, rather than Shredder’s capers mixed with random other one-off villains.
  • Oh right, X-Men. Channel 6 is now calling the TMNT (all mutants, really) an evil scourge and the people of New York are terrified of them, even though they’re obviously out to do good. Also there is an organization of mutants that are trying to take over and establish mutants as the dominant species. Sound familiar at all?
  • The art is way darker and more detailed, but not as good. I hate the change to the Turtles’ bandannas, specifically. Their more angular appearance isn’t too bad, and makes them look a little more in line with the 2003 TMNT. I mostly just dislike that the New York sky is now constantly reds and purples, and that even the water is rarely ever blue any more. The attitude shift is not selling me, especially since the scripts are still pretty hammy, so there’s a very noticeable mood dissonance.
  • I like April’s new jacket and shoes. So much less garish than the yellow jumpsuit and white boots.
  • I was actually really shocked when Shredder asploded the Channel 6 building. Like, this is a Saturday Morning Cartoon. It’s not supposed to have major events that don’t get magically wiped away at the end of the episode. But it does, and it influences the entire rest of the season. Like I said before, there’s a much higher level of continuity in season eight, to the point where it could almost be a stand-alone mini-series, much like the first season.

I am already aware that things take another sharp turn in season nine, but I don’t know all of the specifics. I guess we’ll just have to start watching and see!